


A Start

by BurningTea



Series: Season 11 fic [9]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Caring Dean Winchester, Caring Sam Winchester, Castiel Angst, Castiel in the Bunker, Dean POV, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s11e06 Our Little World, I can't quite leave this general scenario alone, M/M, More ptsd, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 04:43:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5234552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam can't find any of the angel blades. He asks Dean to talk to Cas and find out why they've all vanished.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Start

**Author's Note:**

> I am not willing to say how many codas on Cas' trauma being noticed I will write. Perhaps this will be it. Perhaps this is now all I will write about. Ever.

Cas has been acting weird. Dean didn’t notice it at first, put it down to the whole angel-in-a-bunker thing. Or to it just being Cas, because… Well. Because Cas. 

It’s not, though. Even Sam’s noticed something.

“He’s done what?” Dean asks, turning from the stove and flipping the tea-towel over his shoulder as he stares at Sam. 

Sam shakes his head, his hands slightly out to the sides, and his mouth hangs open for a beat before he speaks, like he’s having trouble getting all his words lined up.

“He’s taken every single angel blade we have and hidden them somewhere. And he won’t tell me where.”

Dean feels his face twist into bemusement mixed with irritation, something he’s been feeling a lot with Cas around more.

“Why?”

“I have no freaking idea,” Sam says. “When I asked him he just did that head-tilt thing and sloped off back to his room. I haven’t seen him since.”

Not that he’s been keeping an eye on Cas or anything, but a tendril of worry sneaks through Dean as he turns back to the stove and pushes the potatoes around in the pan. 

“How long ago was that?” he asks, aiming for casual.

“About three hours. He was meant to be helping me with that project, but…”

Sam leaves the sentence hanging, and Dean’s isn’t so deluded as to think Sam’s missed the way his shoulders are tense or how he’s still moving the food around when it doesn’t need it. They’ve both found Cas missing when he’s supposed to be doing something, have both found him holed up in his room. Dean’s beginning to wonder if he should have given him the thing, but what was the alternative? Now Cas is finally sticking around, they can hardly leave him standing in the corner overnight like…like some lamp, or something. He wasn’t supposed to tidy himself away into his room like it’s Cas storage, though.

“Right. I’ll go talk to him,” Dean says. And then, because he has no idea what he’ll say when he does. “After we eat.”

Cas doesn’t show his face while Dean finishes cooking, or while they eat, or even while Dean makes Sam help him tidy up. Once the kitchen’s sparkling clean, Dean figures he’d better go and find out what’s going on. Doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it, though. 

He knocks before he goes in, half hoping Cas won’t answer. It’s not that Dean wants Cas to be going through whatever it is he’s going through on his own. It’s just that Dean isn’t exactly the best person on the planet to help anyone through feelings or trauma. Not unless they want a ‘walk it off’ approach. Or a whiskey. And he’s still got enough of a mental image of that truly screwed up 2014 in his mind that he’s not rushing to hand Cas a bottle. 

Instead of silence, he hears movement in the room, followed by the door opening a few inches. Cas peers out. Fuck, but his hair’s a mess. Dean can’t think what the angel’s been up to for it to be stuck out all over like that. 

Well, he can think of a couple of things, but this is Cas, so unless that drugged up version really has dropped in from a hopefully made-up future, it’s probably not that. 

“Yes?” Cas asks. He squints at Dean as though the light from the hallway is hurting his eyes. 

“You sitting in there in the dark?” Dean asks, not meaning it to sound so judgmental. 

“So what if I am?” Cas asks, his squint changing into a scowl. “What do you want, Dean?”

“Angel blades,” Dean blurts out, because he doesn’t really know. “Sam said you’ve scuttled off with them all. What gives?”

Cas draws back, the door opening a little further as he does so. 

“I didn’t scuttle,” he says, sounding offended. 

“Yeah, fine. Whatever. You strode off like a true warrior,” Dean says, “but why did you take them and where are they? Sam wants them.”

“Why?”

He opens his mouth, but Sam never actually said. 

“Look, just tell me where you put them, Cas. It’s late and I want to get to bed.”

Cas’ expression says he finds that hard to believe, but he doesn’t call Dean on his usual bedtime. For a moment, he stares up at Dean, seeming smaller and less formidable than he usually does, and then he slouches back. Dean thinks he’s about to have the door shut in his face, but it swings open to show him the dim figure of Cas climbing back onto the bed. It didn’t register before, but he’s pretty sure Cas isn’t wearing his usual get-up.

Taking the open door as an invitation, he follows Cas to the bed and sits on the edge, wanting an answer to the angel blades question now that it’s been asked. Cas pulls a blanket up over himself, but he doesn’t tell Dean to leave.

“You find some new clothes, Cas?” Dean asks. 

“Yes.”

Okay, then. Cas isn’t feeling chatty. Dean used to think Cas was never chatty, but he’s seen the guy in all sorts of moods and situations since then and Cas can talk up a storm when the mood takes him. This is evidently not one of those moods.

“Did you take the blades for something important?” he tries, wishing he didn’t feel quite so much like he was talking to a kid. Cas is not a kid. Not even close. The guy can be naive about things at times, but he’s no kid. 

Cas shifts, moving about until he’s further up the bed with his back against the headboard. With only the light from the hall spilling in, Dean can’t make out his friend’s face properly, and Cas is little more than a heap of grey. 

“It’s not sensible to have them lying around,” Cas says at last. 

“So, what, you’ve put them somewhere safe in case some neighborhood kid walks in and tries to play with one?”

“I just feel safer with them not lying around.”

Dean feels surprise, registering it as a bloom of bright confusion in his chest. Safe. Cas doesn’t feel safe with the blades out where someone could get them. Before now, it’s never really occurred to Dean that Cas could feel unsafe. He always strides headlong into danger, ready to smite anything he has to. Feeling safe hasn’t ever seemed to be on Cas’ list of needs. 

“Safer?” he asks, when he’s sure his tone of voice won’t make too much of it.

“You don’t leave all of your guns out on the library table,” Cas says. Well, snaps. 

“Yeah, but I don’t hide every gun in the place. Cas, it’s not like this place is open to the public-”

“It’s not exactly a fortress, is it, though?” Cas breaks in. “People have made it in before. Besides, I don’t… I don’t like knowing the blades are just…there.”

Which is not something Cas has had an issue with in the past. Something’s changes and Dean isn’t liking the shape he’s putting together from these pieces.

“You don’t think me or Sam would…?” he asks, not able to finish the sentence. Because, pushed right to the edge by the Mark or not, Dean almost had, hadn’t he?

“No,” Cas says, but his body language, what Dean can see of it, is hunched up. “No, I don’t think Sam… I mean, it’s not like I’ve thrown them away. If Sam really needs one…”

But not Dean. Oh, Cas will no doubt get Dean a blade if he tells him to. Dean hasn’t missed the fact that Cas pretty much does as Dean tells him to, some arguing aside. That doesn’t stop a twinge in his chest at the fact Cas doesn’t seem comfortable with the idea of Dean having a blade.

Dean should ignore it, leave it until he’s figured out some way of broaching the matter with sensitivity and all that crap. He should go find Sam and make him look up how to talk to an angel about having been beaten up by his best friend. That’s what he should do.

“You think I’m going to attack you again?” he asks. 

“I didn’t say that.” 

But Cas’ voice is stiff and he’s pulled in so tight that Dean has trouble making out his shape. 

“Yeah, well you didn’t have to,” Dean says. Anger is so much easier than guilt. “You might as well have spray-painted it on the walls. What, you seriously think I’m going to press play on the rerun? Cas, come on. You know that wasn’t…”

Wasn’t what? Him? It was him, and Dean knows it. 

And Cas isn’t speaking, isn’t moving. 

That worry snakes up into Dean’s throat and he leaves the bed, switching on the lamp and swearing at the sight of Cas huddled glassy-eyed on the bed. In that moment, Dean is sure Cas isn’t in the room with him. Wherever Cas is, it’s somewhere making him clammy and hunched, somewhere that’s leaving him gripping the edges of the blanket as though it’s all that’s keeping him grounded in his vessel.

“Cas? Cas, you there?” 

Cas can’t seem to hear him, and Dean is filled with the irrational sense that he’s staring at an empty body. Only, that can’t be right. They’ve never discussed it, but if Cas leaves, surely Jimmy’s body will basically be that: a body. And the form in front of Dean is still holding on tight to the covers, is still sitting upright. More or less. He has to call Cas back, and that means tamping down on this fucking anger that’s swelled in him, fighting down the fear that’s a vice around his throat, and forcing himself to be what Cas needs.

“Cas, you’re in the Bunker. You’re in your room in the Bunker. Come on, come back to me,” he says, keeping his voice low and as calm as he can. 

Still no response. 

No. No, not quite. Cas’ lips are moving, ever so slightly, like he’s speaking a silent language to no-one. 

A shadow falls over the bed and Dean swings round to see Sam in the doorway, staring in.

“What’s going on?” Sam asks. “Is Cas okay?”

“Does he look okay?” Dean asks. “Fuck, Sam, I think he’s… I don’t know. Having flashbacks or something. Or he’s switched off. He isn’t hearing me. What do I do?”

“You’re asking me?” Sam sounds thrown. “He listens to you way more than he listens to me. That link you have or something. He always answers you prayers before mine.”

Prayers. Yes. Sounds and words, they can’t be instinctive to an angel. Right? Hell, Cas doesn’t even have a mouth in his true form. He’s some wavelength. Dean’s hazy on the details. But prayer, that’s something Cas has to hear no matter what form he’s in. And he can hear Dean when he’s nowhere near. Prayer gets through to Cas when nothing else can.

As Sam joins him by the bed, his hands out as though he wants to get hold of Cas and isn’t sure how badly that could go, Dean prays. 

“Cas,” he tries, eyes fixed on his friend. It’s strange to pray with Cas right in front of him, and it takes him a couple of goes to get into the right head-space. “Cas, I’m praying to you, buddy. Wherever you’ve gone, I need you to come back. Just come back and talk to me. To us. Tell us what’s wrong. All right? Please, Cas. Er.” 

He glances at Sam to find his brother staring at Cas with just as much desperation as Dean feels. Dean forgets, sometimes, how close Sam and Cas have gotten to be. Sam’s not been the boy with the demon blood, not to Cas, for a long time. 

“Amen,” Dean finishes, in case that makes a difference. It’s not like he’s ever gone in for the classic prayer with Cas, but he isn’t taking chances here.

Cas has stopped muttering to himself, and his breaths are short and shallow. He still isn’t focusing on anything in front of him. 

“What now?” Dean asks. 

“I don’t know. You usually snapped out of it when I spoke to you,” Sam says.

And…what?

“Snapped out of it?” Dean asks, caught by Sam’s words and pulled partway out of his panic. “What the fuck do you mean? I was never like this.”

“Er, yeah,” Sam says. “You were.”

“When?”

“Dean, we can talk about this later-”

“We can talk about it now,” Dean says, even though he keeps glancing back at Cas, even though his fingers keep twitching to do something to help his friend. “When was I like this?”

Sam looks reluctant, his lips pressing together, but after a long moment he sighs.

“After Purgatory. You’d just…glaze over. Sometimes, I swear you were back there.”

Dean hesitates. He has a vague memory of seeing a guy in an interview room and, through him, around him, the trees of Purgatory. Suddenly, he isn’t so sure his own memories of that time are solid.

“And you just spoke to me?”

“Yeah. I tried to put my hand on your shoulder once and… Well. It didn’t go to plan.”

Sam winces, and Dean searches his mind for any memory of lashing out at Sam that might be mixed up with fighting vamps and leviathan and God knows what else in that sepia landscape. He comes up blank. Right. So he shouldn’t touch Cas, then.

Instead, he tries praying again. At least it feels like he’s doing something.

This time, Sam mutters something about getting some water and slips out of the room, and Dean finds his words come easier.

“Cas,” he starts. “I pray to you to hear me. Listen, man, whatever I did to set you off, I’m sorry. You don’t want angel blades lying around? I hear you. We can bury them deep. Just…come back. I need you. I-”

“Dean?”

Dean jumps at the sound of his name on Cas’ lips, stupid as that is. Looking up, he sees Cas looking back at him, eyes still not entirely focused. Needing to check that Cas is really seeing him, Dean is on the bed and has his hands on either side of Cas’ face in moments, peering into those eyes and trying to chase out any hint of dislocation. 

“You back?” he asks. 

Cas nods.

“I…I think so.”

“Where’d you go?” Dean asks. “Can you talk about it?”

Cas shakes his head. Now that Dean takes a moment to notice it, Cas is trembling. Without thinking it through, Dean settles himself on the bed next to Cas and pulls the guy into his arms, more or less cradling his head against Dean’s neck. He feels a puff of warm air on his neck, but he doesn’t pull away. Cas is a solid weight against him and he needs that right now. Screw it if Sam thinks it’s weird. 

“You sure?” he asks, because he knows it sometimes takes him a few goes to get something out.

Cas is quiet, but it’s taken on an edge that suggests the silence is working up to something. Sure enough, a few minutes later Dean feels the guy breathe out against his neck and the air is followed by words.

“When I was running with the Angel Tablet,” Cas says, his voice a deep rumble Dean can feel against his collar-bone, “I kept ahead of Naomi and her followers by shifting, time and time and time again, throughout Biggerson’s.”

Dean frowns. He knows Cas will be going somewhere with this. Cas always has a reason for his stories, his observations, even if the purpose is hard to fathom. To show Cas he’s listening, he cards a hand through the angel’s hair.

“Sometimes, I’d have to shift many times in a few moments. The scene, the people, the light, would all change so quickly. It’s… Recently, it’s almost as though that’s happening.”

“Almost as though you’re flapping from place to place?” Dean asks. 

He isn’t sure yet what Cas is getting at. Not really. Wouldn’t flying, even if it’s some sort of memory, be a good thought for Cas? Unless it’s the pain of losing flight which is hurting him.

“In a way,” Cas says. He sounds hesitant. “The scene changes and it’s like I’m somewhere else, but I’m not.”

There’s real reluctance in that. Real dread. Dean’s hand stills and he closes his eyes. Sam was right. 

“What are you seeing, Cas?” he asks, because with Cas he sometimes has to make very sure to be clear.

Instead of answering, Cas turns his head and leans into Dean. This is new, but Cas sinks into the hug as though Dean’s been holding him close on a bed for years. He supposes it might not seem so much weirder than any type of hug, to Cas. A few months living a crappy human life with hardly any friends and no family is hardly going to have got him used to the finer points of physical interaction. For all Dean knows, Cas might think this is just what normal friends do. 

“Okay. You don’t have to tel me,” Dean says, because he’s feeling like Cas is egg-shell fragile right now and he doesn’t want to put too much pressure on. “We can just sit here.”

“We’re not sitting,” Cas mutters. 

“Whatever,” Dean says. “Unless… Do you want me to move? I can go, if…”

He gets as far as uncurling his hand from the back of Cas’ head, but Cas reaches up and winds the fingers of one hand into the front of Dean’s shirt.

“No. Stay.”

They sit like that, just breathing, holding each other, until Sam’s footsteps echo down the hallway. Dean thinks, distantly, that he should move, but Cas is almost done with trembling and it feels wrong to pull away now. 

When Sam appears, he stops just inside the doorway with a glass of water in one hand and his mouth slightly open.

“Oh,” he says, after a beat. “Right. You guys… I can just leave this…” 

Before Dean can tell Sam that this is just because Cas needed a hug and that Sam should get over it, his brother has left the water on top of the dresser and backed out of the room, pulling the door mostly shut behind him. 

“You call if you need anything,” Sam says as he disappears, and he’s gone before Dean can clear this up. Sam’s parting look was pointed, probably meant to tell Dean not to screw this up, like otherwise he’d deliberately wind Cas up again. 

Like helping Cas through this hasn’t shot to the top of Dean’s priority list.

“Sam sounded strange,” Cas offers into the silence. “Is he all right?”

“Probably gone to make us a card,” Dean says before he can stop himself. 

He feels Cas stiffen and curses in his head.

“Why would he be making us a card?” Cas asks slowly.

Dean tries a chuckle, but it comes out strained. 

“What can I say? The kid loves cards.”

“That’s not true.”

Just for once, it’d be good if Cas would let one of Dean’s ridiculous comments slide. Honesty is great. They could do with more of it. But getting side-tracked onto what really made Sam run out of the room when he saw Cas and Dean hugging on the bed is not the point of this exercise. Which assumes Dean has, at any point, had an actual plan, here. 

“Yeah, well,” he says, in case that will pass as an answer. Almost without realizing, he strokes his hand through Cas’ hair again. It’s soothing. He doesn’t think too much about why that is. “Maybe he should take it up. He could do with a hobby that’s not involved with memorizing murder facts.”

There’s more silence. Dean imagines he can hear the faint rasp of his fingers in Cas’ hair, and he can definitely feel the warmth of Cas’ body seeping through the material between them. 

“I see you,” Cas says, just as Dean’s beginning to feel sleep creeping up on him. “When I… When it happens, I see you.”

It stabs, even though that whole thing about the blades means it’s not so much a surprise. 

“Me?” he asks, because he’s nothing if not in the habit of throwing himself into more pain. 

“Yeah,” Cas says. He moves his head, nosing at the underneath of Dean’s jaw in a way that’s got to be an accident before he goes on. “I see you on your knees. In that crypt. Bleeding.”

Regret drips from Cas’ voice.

“You see you hurting me?” Dean has to ask, because Cas phased out when Dean raised his voice. It seemed more like Cas was scared of him, and that would make sense. Couldn’t be easy for the guy to find his human friend, his charge, delivering a beating like the one Dean had rained down on Cas. “You don’t… You don’t see it the other way around?”

“Yes.” That sounds dragged out, like Cas didn’t want to admit it. He sighs. “I see us hurting each other. I see my siblings hurting me. I see Hannah dying. I see… Dean, I see so much pain.”

It’s an echo of words from years before, back when Cas stood in that beautiful room and told Dean to let the world end. He hopes to God, or to whoever’s taking God’s message what with the bastard having fucked off, that Cas isn’t feeling that way now. 

“You know that’s not all there is, right?” Dean asks. Seeing the light for someone else is always so much easier. “And you know that you’re safe now. You want to keep those blades hidden away, I get it. I do. I should have thought about that.”

Cas pulls away, sitting up and meeting Dean’s eyes. The blue is clouded.

“Dean, I’m not safe. Everything I do, I end up hurting someone. Or getting hurt. I don’t know how to make it stop. And I want it to stop.”

“That why you’ve been hiding away and watching TV so much? Do you feel safer then?”

It’s not like Dean’s skipped over that method entirely. He’s just always found drinking and screwing around are a stronger hit. Not that he’s going to suggest those methods to Cas. He’s hoping the guy’s somehow avoided shows which feature those lifestyle choices, because Cas is nothing is not sponge-like when it comes to trying out ways to be human. Or human-adjacent. 

“A bit,” Cas says. “It means I can push the thoughts away. For a while.”

“Does anything else help?”

Dean is a sadist. He must be. Cas’ thigh is still warm against his and the sense of Cas pressed against him properly lingers, but he isn’t deluding himself into thinking it’s more than it is. Cas just needed a hug, and Dean started it, so, really, Cas can’t be blamed at all. 

But Cas is looking at him strangely, his eyes narrowed and his head just slightly tilted. 

“This…” he says. He sounds even less sure than he did a few moments ago. “This helped. Can I…?” 

Dean swallows. He hopes he isn’t misinterpreting what Cas is asking for. He nods, and holds out his arms. 

More slowly than Dean was hoping for, Cas leans in, closer this time, and presses himself right up to Dean. He settles more on top of Dean than before, and no way can Dean pass this off as just a hug between friends. Not that he wants to. Not really. He’s glad Sam already cleared off, though. 

From this angle, he can stroke Cas’ hair, and keep going over his shoulders and all the way down his back, making long, sweeping lines. Cas makes a noise that might be approval and wraps his arms around Dean, snaking them behind him and tucking his head under Dean’s chin.

“This helps, huh?” Dean asks. He can’t quite let go of that part of him that needs to pretend he’s just doing this to help Cas out. “Good to know.”

They don’t talk any more, not tonight, and they don’t get up to anything, either. Dean does press a kiss to Cas’ temple every now and again, and Cas shifts a little as though the sensation pleases him, but that’s about it. They lie in the semi-dark of the room, wrapped together, with far too many wounds between them. They have at least acknowledged some of them are there, that are wounds to be healed on Cas’ side.

Dean tells himself it’s a start.


End file.
